


a time to gather stones together

by ThreadSketchier



Series: Glimpses [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Brother Feels, Gallows Humor, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, Moral Lessons, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 04:43:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18887413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreadSketchier/pseuds/ThreadSketchier
Summary: Darth Vader is dead; long live Anakin Skywalker.  Han wants to make sure Luke is OK with that.





	a time to gather stones together

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I'm shamelessly incorporating the Tumblr meme of Han starting corny "hand" jokes with Luke that will infamously continue for the rest of their lives.

Han generally wasn’t in the business of being grateful to have preposterously large and aggressive predators around, but he had to admit, if it wasn’t for the Gorax, the Ewoks wouldn’t have had an extremely handy bunch of booby traps lying in wait for Imperial troops.  Resetting those traps was an unexpected chore amongst the various other clean-up tasks the Alliance had on the forest moon, but he figured they couldn’t complain much when they’d scored victory because of them. Once Han and the others had realized that’s what the Ewoks were up to, they’d volunteered to help them, despite the tribe’s initial insistence they could do it themselves.  It was the least the Alliance could do to repay them.

_ You guys ever considered moving? _ Han had asked Wicket through C-3PO.  Unfortunately the Gorax existed across the entire moon.  While not prolific, their sheer size and appetite meant each one had plenty of territory to claim.

Hopefully they’d all be moving on before one of those things showed up.

Luke had disappeared at some point, and after he’d been gone for a couple of hours Han decided to track him down in the direction he’d last been seen walking.  Maybe it was an intrusion, maybe it wasn’t, but he wanted to make sure he was okay.

He had to wander a long distance through the forest before the brush and trees cleared again.  As he reached the edge of the glade he heard the sounds of digging, and sure enough, he found Luke spreading and smoothing dark earth on a bare patch of ground.

“Hey, kid,” Han announced himself quietly, trying not to startle him.  Luke still turned abruptly, self-conscious for a moment before he relaxed. Breathing heavily, he wiped sweat from his brow and plunged his makeshift shovel into the dirt to keep it upright.  Han squinted at the tool – it was one of the steering vanes from a speeder bike sheared off with most of its length left intact as a handle. Luke must have cut it free from one of the wrecked vehicles with his lightsaber.  Pretty ingenious.

“Need a hand?” Han asked, getting an inkling of what this was all about and trying to be diplomatic about it.  Leia would be proud.

Luke studied him a little dubiously, then burst out laughing and wriggled the fingers of his right hand – thankfully repaired now and no longer hidden by a glove.  “Thanks, but I’ve already got one,” he replied cheekily. Han scowled at him, and it just made him laugh harder.

“You’re terrible, kid.”

“You walked right into that one, Han.”

Han held up a finger at him.  “Just for that, I’m never letting it go.  You’re gonna regret this day for starting this.”  Luke tilted his head back and cackled.

When his laughter began to die down Han regarded the ashy dirt pile next to them.  The blackened remnants of scorched logs had been pushed away to one side in an orderly heap.  “Is this what I think it is?”

Steadying himself with a deep breath, Luke nodded.  The two of them stared at it silently for a few minutes, and Han wondered if anything would ever grow on that patch again.

“I asked him to come with me, before he took me up to the Death Star,” Luke said softly.

Han’s gaze darted aside to him in astonishment.  “And you would’ve left with him, if he’d went along with it?”

“Of course,” Luke replied without hesitation.  “I wouldn’t have made an offer like that if I didn’t mean it.”

Something close to betrayal knotted Han’s gut, despite knowing how difficult this was for Luke.  Imagining him running away not only from the Rebellion, but from  _ them _ , for the sake of Vader was galling.

The hurt and disgust had to be plain on his face, for Luke to add, “Han, he knew he didn’t deserve it.  He said it was too late for him. He felt there was no other way out than to just ‘obey his master.’” There was venom in Luke’s voice under those last words, and Han knew that animosity wasn’t directed at Vader.  But instead of being provoked, Luke continued in a calm, questioning tone, “How many times in your life did you turn your back on doing the right thing because you thought there was no point, that there wasn’t anything else to this life but misery and corruption?  And when you did that once, then twice, then more, the deeper you went, did you think you could ever stop? How many others did you know who felt like that?”

Han looked him square in the eye without flinching with a knee-jerk thought of  _ you can’t compare me to Vader _ , but the heat was rising in his neck and ears because he knew the point Luke was trying to make.  He’d enlisted with the Empire not out of any sense of patriotism, but to claw his way out of the slums and make a better life for himself.  He’d refused to turn a blind eye to Chewie’s abuse, but then smuggling was the only means he’d felt was viable to keep the two of them fed and surviving.  He wasn’t a trafficker, but he’d done nothing to help the poor wretches he’d seen along the way, and he didn’t turn down jobs from slavers. Time and time again those he thought were friends stabbed him in the back and left them high and dry. Everyone had an ulterior motive, and it usually revolved around money or power, no matter how pathetically small that gain sometimes was.

The galaxy was an ugly place and it wasn’t up to him to fix that, until these two idealistic idiots careened into his path.

“What do you think drove a man like Anakin Skywalker to become Darth Vader?”

Han grimaced.  “I don’t wanna know.”

Luke’s eyes fell to the soft moss under their boots.  “I’m afraid to find out too. But I hope I could someday, so that I can understand.  And not make the same mistakes.”

“Y’know what they say, kid, about not needing to set yourself on fire to know it burns…”

Luke pinned him with a stare that somehow managed to look offended and forgiving all at once.  “I’m pretty sure that had something to do with the reason why my father was in that suit.”

Han blinked, then marveled anew at his remarkable ability to swallow his boot whole.   _ Kark _ .  Recovering, he held out a hand toward the fresh grave.  “And you roasted him  _ again? _ ”  He’d already made a nerf of himself, so he might as well spit that one out too.

“His body was gone, Han,” Luke said, almost in a shy and reverent whisper.  “He became one with the Force when he died. All that was left was his armor.  It felt…right to dispose of it this way.” He released a slightly shuddering breath.  “The same man that was a slave and a Jedi wore this suit, so I wanted to honor what was left of him, but I wanted it destroyed too.  Because this thing was his prison. It felt like…releasing him.”

Chagrined, Han nodded silently.  As hard as this was on Luke – to not only inherit the Empire’s butcher as a father, but to lose him almost immediately – Han thought it was far better for him.  At least he could begin to move on and not continue facing the ordeal if Vader had lived, even if he’d supposedly changed. The emotional burden wasn’t going to disappear as easily, but the physical one was no longer present.

Luke wrapped an arm around the steering vane embedded in the ground and leaned on it.  “I just came to bury what didn’t burn up. There was more left than I thought. Didn’t want that lying around.”

“Not unless you wanted them added to the village décor.”

That elicited a surprising chuckle out of Luke.  “Oh boy. No. Definitely not.”

While he’d somewhat managed to lighten the mood, Han understood he  _ was _ an interloper here; his opinions on Vader weren’t relevant or welcome in the space Luke needed for himself.  “Uh…well, I’ll, uh…I’ll head back and – ”

Luke’s head snapped up from where it had dipped in contemplation.  “Wait, it’s – ” He gazed at the bare patch again, one last time, and sighed. Squaring his shoulders, he pulled the steering vane from the ground and turned toward Han.  “I’m done here. I’ll go back with you.”

Han held his eyes for a moment as if asking,  _ Are you sure? _  Luke just nodded and fell in step with him, and Han stretched out a hand to the nape of his neck, gripping him in consolation.


End file.
